An attractive forum for everybody interested in atmospheric remote sensing by occultation methods and/or the use of occultation data in atmospheric physics, chemistry, meteorology, and climate.
******************************************************************

The Joint OPAC-6 & IROWG-5 Workshop
will follow the objectives and the successful format of the OPAC series (see previous one at http://wegcwww.uni-graz.at/opacirowg2013).

The integrated 5th Workshop of the International Radio Occultation Working Group
(IROWG) will include working meetings. The permanent Working Group of the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS) focuses on the exchange of experiences in the exploitation of RO data for operational and research use.

With growing impact and applications of radio occultation data and many exciting recent results from our community in different fields such as meteorology and climate science, it is just the right time to gather again.

You are cordially invited to join OPAC-IROWG 2016, the Joint OPAC-6 & IROWG-5 Workshop in Seggau Castle, Leibnitz near Graz, Austria, in September 2016.
Welcome!

The *2nd Announcement and Call for Papers* will follow by March 18, 2016, together with opening of our website http://wegcwww.uni-graz.at/opacirowg2016/.
==================================================================

As most of you know, Axel Von Engeln resigned as IROWG Co-Chair during IROWG-4 in Melbourne in April. Axel served IROWG and did much of the heavy lifting for us for many years. His support in establishing and determining the direction of this group was appreciated by all of us, and helped put us on the map with CGMS and WMO as well as RO scientists worldwide, and we will miss his leadership. The news I have is that I have also decided to resign. The result is, we need to identify 2 new co-chairs for IROWG. After conferring with chairs from the other CGMS groups and discussing this with management who appointed me to this position, we have decided to follow the method that International TOVS Working Group (ITOVS) has been using for many years – democratic process via email. The requirements for this position are:

Reasonable knowledge and experience in the field of GNSS Radio Occultation

Time and funding to devote to performing duties as a IROWG co-chair – including some minimal travel

Willing to serve for up to 5 years

Backing of a member country/agency for some minimal support for the IROWG Working Group Meetings (desired)

Tony Mannucci and I are going to request that if you would like to be considered for IROWG co-chair, that you send your request to be nominated to Tony (email: anthony.j.mannucci at jpl.nasa.gov) by August 31, 2015. The list of self nominees will then be vetted to assure nominees meet above requirements. Pending a sufficient number of nominees, we plan to request that IROWG members vote for the 2 nominees of their choice via email.

Please also take note of the following information provided by the local
organizers:

———–

Dear Colleagues,

Preparations for IROWG-4 are well underway and we look forward to welcoming
you at the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne. We are now in the process of
putting together a draft program and need an indication of who will attend
this conference.

We would be very pleased if you could indicate your intention to attend this
conference. This will help us in our preparations. We would be grateful if you
could respond by the end of this month.

most of you already know place, time of the 4th IROWG workshop: it is going to be in Melbourne, Australia from the 16th to 22nd of April 2015. The workshop is hosted by The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR).

Registration and abstract submission as well as further information for
IROWG-4 is now available at:

most of you already know place, time of the 4th IROWG workshop: it is going to be in Melbourne, Australia from the 16th to 22nd of April 2015. The workshop is hosted by The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR).

Registration and abstract submission as well as further information for IROWG-4 is now available at:

we are pleased to announce that the next CGMS “International Radio Occultation Working Group” workshop (IROWG-4) will be hosted at the Bureau of Meteorology (http://www.bom.gov.au/) and the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (http://www.cawcr.gov.au/) in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia from 16th to 22nd of April 2015. Please mark these days in your calendar.

Further information on registration, program, etc will follow soon and will also be available at http://www.irowg.org.

– Critical Impact of the potential Delay or Descoping of the COSMIC-2/FORMOSAT-7 Programme, IROWG/DOC/2013/0

– Status of the Global Observing System for Radio Occultation (Update 2013), IROWG/DOC/2013/02

are also available.

You might note that we updated the IROWG website, which is now hosted by EUMETSAT. This will give us easier update options, e.g. allowing members of IROWG to work on certain pages. Early next year we will also include further pages on ROTrends, the RO-CLIM SCOPE-CM project, and how RO data is assimilated in NWP models.

The new website offers several other new features, e.g. RSS. We will further explore that and also try e.g. the meeting calendar next year.

For those of you entering the festive season, enjoy and talk to you again next year. Kind regards,